Although it was the journey – the Camino from Ferrol to Santiago de Compostela – rather than the destination that was important, the historic city in Galicia, in Spain’s northern region, is both beguiling and intriguing. For it manages to balance the thrust of an increasingly secular modern world, with…

Art is putting colour and liveliness into the heart of Canido, a run-down suburb in Ferrol, Galicia, northern Spain. Skeletons of buildings have become the frames for giant-sized portraits or tableaus; time-battered walls are renewed with startling portraits, creating an increasingly popular tourist route. All this is the result of an…

Discovering new authors is one of the great joys of reading and the International Man Booker Prize, which publishes work in translation, provides seemingly endless inspiration. I’m clearly not alone as, according to Neilson which tracks such statistics, sales of works not initially written in English, are at an all-time…

For a heart-stopping moment it seems we are heading, really fast, for a barely visible sandbank on which an elegant white heron stands, an imperious lone beacon. Then, with a perfectly timed flick of his wrist, our helmsman quells the engine on the large, motorised canoe and it slews into…

Quote of the day

“I think a lot of people have been, secretly perhaps, reading and loving children’s books in adulthood for a long time. You are missing a wealth of treasures.. To miss out on something so rich, strange, varied and enticing in adulthood, just out of embarrassment or perhaps because it hasn’t occurred to you, seems such a waste. There is such joy to be had ...Go to children’s fiction to see the world with double eyes: your own, and those of your childhood self,"